Spider-Man: Homecoming

Given the well-worn Hollywood maxim "If at first you more or less succeed, reboot and reboot again", it was only a matter of time before the barely-settled cobwebs were dusted off the Spider-Man property and ol' webhead was re-resurrected for Generation MCU. You know the drill by now: teenage boy (played, if possible, by someone whose teenage years are some distance behind them) with the proportional strength of a spider swings through New York, fighting technologically enhanced criminals while wearing a skintight onesie and struggling to get off with hot girls. You are familiar with this concept because since 1962 it has been laid out in comics, TV shows and - in the last fifteen years alone - five blockbuster films of alarmingly disparate calibre.

What's crucial to the success of Movie Spidey v3.1 is that, unlike its Andrew Garfield-shaped predecessor, it knows that you know this. Spider-Man: Homecoming features no radioactive spider-bite, no discovery of wall-crawling abilities and no cruel twists of fate leading to the deaths of platitude-spouting uncles. Peter Parker's superheroic origin is tossed off with delightfully casual indifference in the briefest of exchanges between him and awestruck best pal Ned, during which Peter's response to Ned's enquiry about the radioactive spider is simply "The spider's dead, Ned". And along with it, Spidey's cinematic past. Time to move on.

Not entirely sure about the new costume though tbh

Unshackled from all that baggage, everyone involved in Homecoming is free to do their own thing, trusting us not to sweat the details. It's enormously liberating to watch as a Spider-fan, and even when the film hooks up with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe - as inevitably it must - it does so in the smartest of ways, allowing it to function effectively as a standalone piece but enhanced by the sardonic charm of Robert Downey Jr's wonderfully-executed surrogate uncle, Tony Stark.

The plot of Homecoming is flimsy and hardly worth mentioning, except that Peter's nemesis this time is Adrian Toomes (aka Vulture), reimagined from the comics' grouchy, slaphead OAP in the shape of Michael Keaton: part Batman, part Birdman. The script glosses over his transformation from salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar contractor to mad flying bastard, but it's in keeping with the best Spidey villains: ordinary Joes who find themselves pushed that little bit too far by bureaucracy or let down by an uncaring world. Keaton is so much fun to watch that it's a shame he wasn't allowed to explore his beef with society further, and once he dons the Vulture mask he disappears completely into anonymous pixels.

Fortunately we're left with Tom Holland, who might just be the actor to have finally nailed Peter Parker's youth, intelligence, awkwardness and unbridled glee at being able to swing through Manhattan's concrete canyons on ropes of wrist-jizz. Holland is delightful, occasionally reminiscent of a young Michael J Fox, and holds the screen remarkably despite all the necessary noisy fireworks that characterise the modern superhero movie. He revels, too, in Spidey's New York stand-up patter, of which Andrew Garfield made a fair fist and which all but eluded Tobey Maguire, and his scenes with the grown-ups (Stark, Toomes, Aunt May) portray Peter's teenage naivety as skilfully as those with his schoolmates demonstrate his growing confidence (unless the schoolmate happens to be intimidatingly sexy and intelligent).

And Ned is *very* sexy and intelligent

Where Homecoming really lands, though, is in its writing and direction. The script makes the most of its umbilical connection to the MCU, allowing Toomes to develop improbably advanced tech with minimal exposition, while simultaneously exploring the hitherto underinvestigated practicalities of being Spider-Man, such as how he might get from A to B without any convenient skyscrapers to swing from (the answer is hilariously prosaic). And it never forgets that we need to be as invested in Peter Parker's problems as we are in Spider-Man's - a situation which allows for the amusing motif of Peter repeatedly running away from terrifying encounters with girls to the much safer ground of battling murderous super-villains.

Enormous liberties are taken with the characterisations of the comics' stalwarts that might give fanboys the fear, but they feel like necessary updates for a progressive, multicultural, seen-it-all 21st century audience. Basically if the casting of Marisa Tomei as Aunt May upset you, you're going to need to forget everything you know about Flash Thompson, Betty Brant and even Mary Jane Watson. Jon Watts, meanwhile (literally, who?), directs with welcome clarity and satisfying reverence: one scene recreates a famous panel from issue 33 of The Amazing Spider-Man that brought all kinds of nostalgic feels to my usually stone cold heart.

It's a pity that Watts' CG Spidey seems to have taken a step back in quality from the relative success of Marc Webb's films towards the videogame awkwardness of Sam Raimi's first entry, and it also grates that yet another superhero film climax has to involve a one-on-one punch-up in the dark, but where these issues just exacerbate the problems of, say, the current DC films, here they survive as niggles in what is largely an enormously successful entry in the genre, hugely boosted by the fact that it's bags of fun and often riotously funny. Spider-Man is back, even if it felt like he never went away, and he's rediscovered his bite.

RobotiCopper

I can't deny it: remakes make me cross. Believe me, I've tried not being That Guy, but every announcement of yet another remake causes me to weep one more tear for the death of originality and creativity. It's not so bad if the film being remade was a good idea squandered by inept execution, but to remake something that's well-liked and ingrained in film culture just seems arrogant to me. Which brings me to this do-over of the adventures of the original tin can copper, a remake which has got me all hot and bothered for an entirely different reason: I really, really wanted to hate it, but it wouldn't let me. It's actually not bad. And I'm totally fucked off about it.

Let's not get carried away. RoboCop: Shadow Remake isn't a great film; it's merely quite good. If it ends up on my Top 10 of 2014, it's because I died before I saw ten films this year. It's a distinctly average superhero origin story we've seen a thousand times, with a bland lead actor in a forgettable costume, no cool catchphrases and no theme tune to speak of apart from a snippet of one stolen from its 1987 self. It's also too long, with one training sequence too many, and it takes its sweet time getting where it needs to go. And let's not forget that it's a remake, which, as I think we can all agree, is a sin.

But, annoyingly, none of that seemed to annoy me. I'm not sure why: maybe it was the immediately disarming gag with the MGM lion. Maybe it was the genuinely exciting opening scene, with policebots versus suicide bombers on the streets of Tehran. Maybe it was that it didn't slavishly attempt to recreate iconic scenes from the original for the sake of a sly wink. One thing's for sure: it benefits enormously from its supporting cast, which includes Michael Keaton in some lovely cardigans and Gary Oldman in a series of strokable knitted ties; if you don't enjoy the sight of Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon maniacally shouting at each other then what are you, some kind of EMOTIONLESS MECHANOID?

I can at least get annoyed by the BBFC's certification: 12A seems to me a wholly inappropriate rating for this film. I realise I'm an old twat, but a lot of people get shot in this film, quite inconsequentially and with precious little blood spilt, and I'm just not sure kids of any age should be watching that. Furthermore, the film's biggest coup, a reveal which I won't spoil here, is almost as unsettling and horrific as anything Verhoeven spattered onto his (still 18-rated) film. It's a brilliant moment, but even I, with my advanced years, found it surprisingly disturbing.

But that's a whole other debate. The argument now is whether or not this Robo is much Cop, and the answer seems to be "well, uh... kind of?" The new film's best ideas are cribbed from the original, apart from a vaguely political running commentary about the use of drones by the military and the influence of right-wing media. The drones argument is an interesting one, but it's handled a little clumsily via a tacked-on Fox News-esque programme which bears little relevance to the plot and is largely designed to show us Samuel L Jackson in a funny wig. But like its other drawbacks, none of this makes RoboCop the disaster I really wanted it to be in order to deploy my raging fury at its shittiness. Its most offensive and egregious moment is the suggestion that Bing is the search engine of choice post-2020, and when that's the worst thing about a remake it's hard to get too angry. Though God knows I tried.